


Help, I Need Somebody (Not Just Anybody)

by impossiblesongs



Series: Post-Library River and Confrontational Twelve [5]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: & Clara is a real bro, Gen, Twelve needs a bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3573446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblesongs/pseuds/impossiblesongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In the end, one word suits all, he supposes. “Home.”</i> – Clara hasn’t seen the Doctor in four months and wants to know just where the hell he’s been, the Doctor finally tells her. (part of the ‘Post-Library River & Confrontational Twelve’ series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help, I Need Somebody (Not Just Anybody)

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Not my characters. This has been a disclaimer.  
>  **AN:** Short AF, I know. Title from [the Beatles song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCGvZgDvtkU). This takes place right after the last part of this series, though he’s the Doctor, so obviously he forgoes checking the landing time. Oops.

Clara approaches the door to her apartment, painfully relieved that this is the last set of groceries she's carrying in. She’s even tempted to stroke the damned doorway, much like the Doctor strokes his console. And she would, if only she hadn’t an armful of groceries that needed balancing.

 

She winces, the last few trips making her back ache from the weight she's had to carry, and kicks the door shut after her. There is a brief struggle between too much space and too little Clara from the doorway all the way to the kitchen, which leads to Clara dumping the last remainings bags onto the table without much care to what’s inside.

 

Sighing in relief, Clara then fetches herself a nice tall glass of water. She mentally checks off the other chores that still need doing. She’s done the weekly grocers visit and paid off all of her overdue bills. Those tended to stack up on her faster than they should when she was off gallivanting into space with an alien madman.

 

So caught up in her silent introspection that Clara fails to take notice when another body joins her in the room. Nor does she startle when he begins going through the bags of groceries she’s bought rather noisily.

 

“Why did you buy these?” the Doctor asks of her, scowling at the knockoffs he’s pulled from one of the bags.

 

“Don’t squish them like that!” Clara snaps at him. “They taste the same as the real ones,” She maintains, marching over to take the sweets from him and hugging them to her chest before he does something horrible like throw them out the window or something. “Besides,” she added, “you don’t have to like them, _I_ do. My house, my rules.”

 

The Doctor continues to go through her groceries, judging every single purchase with a dissatisfied groan or another added frown line, up until the glass of water slips from Clara’s grasp and comes crashing onto her kitchen floor.

 

She’s turns towards the Doctor, facing him, wide-eyed and speechless. Clara takes tiny steps over to him, actually grabbing at his bony arms before she realizes that he’s actually there, in her kitchen.

 

“Doctor,” says Clara, a faint smile appearing. “You’re here. You’re really… really here.”

 

The Doctor’s blesses her with that odd half-smile thing he does now, nodding at her in confirmation. All has gone quiet around them and Clara’s just so glad to see him again. So thankful, that she has the urge to hug him tight and never let him go, only her hand and her temper seem to have other ideas.

 

Without much thought, that palm of hers is up and moving and slapping him hard enough to make him see stars.

 

“Where have you been?!” Clara shouts. The calm of their moment had passed and she’s gone absolutely livid. “It’s been _four_ months! You asked me to leave, _you_ asked that of me, and I accepted it. Because you said you’d come back for me! I _believed_ you! Again! Low and behold, that turned out to be nothing but another set of lies.”

 

Her palms push at him, shoving him away. The aggravation behind her actions attempt to hide away a world of worry but the tears wetting her cheeks, damp and furious, tell him all he needs to know.

 

“I’ve been worried out of my mind here, stuck on Earth with not a word from you or about you! Not knowing if you’ve blown that insect head of yours off on some planet or just, I don’t know, decided you were better off alone. Do you know what that does to a person?” Clara inquired. “To have your best friend just literally drop off the planet, and have no idea what’s gone on. To not know where they are or if they are even alive at all?”

 

The Doctor can only stare, unable to right these things that have hurt her. He waits, silent and regretful for Clara fretting over him in this way.

 

Clara ignores the bags spread all over her kitchen table and pulls out a chair. She sits down. From the way she’s looking at him, he’s not sure if he’s supposed to do the same.

 

“You’re going to tell me everything, do you hear me? Everything you’ve been hiding, or you go away for good. And this time you stay gone, forever.” She blinks, suddenly remorseful, as if her demands were spoken too coldly, options given too harshly.

 

“You are my best friend, Doctor.” She admits, softer. “A friend I’d possibly be able to forgive anything of, but you tell me the truth or you leave me alone.” Her big round eyes are pleading of him, “Do we understand each other?”

 

The Doctor pulls out the chair opposite of her, sits, and gives her a single nod. Clara inhales deeply, calming the rush of emotions that have played out. Her first question is right to the point.

 

“Where the hell have you been?”

 

The Doctor thinks of all the answers he could give. There’s the terribly long and truthful version, the promptly shortened with an awful lot of side variety version, the technical to-the-point (aka Clara won’t notice I’m lying if I use small and sharply descriptive sentences) one, and lastly, the cleverly evasive go-to version: Rule One.

 

In the end, one word suits all, he supposes.

 

“Home.” He answers, finally, though it is more complicated than that. Infinitely so. But it’s the answer she seeks, and Clara deserves a bit of truth for once.

 

The name of his home planet comes out of Clara’s lips in a whisper, as if she’s cautious to speak of it out loud, even and especially to him. His hearts are pained by her drawn conclusion, how it has only formed because everything is tangled up in lies he’s told to her in the past.

 

“No, no.” the Doctor shakes his head, determined to clear up the wrong assumption quickly. There is too much to tell her and not enough time, there is never enough. “No, Clara,” he clarifies. It all gets stuck in his throat for a moment, before he’s forcibly swallowing it down. It burns. “I don’t mean Gallifrey.”

 

He starts with Christmas. Finding Wee Susan, his _granddaughter_ , in her crib. And he tells Clara of a River older than he’s ever seen her. A River who is not dead, but instead alive and out from the Library.

 

He tells Clara about a family, his family, that is both magnificent and terrifying, each of the descriptions being prone to happen at the same time, within the same meeting.

 

When he tells her of Blu, or tries to, he tells Clara of what she can know. That Blu is his son with River, their first son. That he's more familiar with the adult version and has only come across a child version once. The Doctor doesn’t know it all, but he is careful not to speak of anything that concerns Clara and Blu specifically. It makes some bits tricky, but he does what he can. Explains it the best that he can. He leaves out the information that Susan is Blu’s daughter, not sure if it would change anything that needs to happen, but remains positive that it would make Clara’s eyes bulge thrice their normal size. 

 

He tells her of Art and Jessie, too. His and River’s twins, whom he meets sporadically, at every age, with absolutely no warning of it. "They are very much the calm to Blu's storm," he describes to her.

 

"Well said, Oncoming Storm." Clara quips, not one bit surprised that the son is described to be as untamable as the father. Or mother, actually.

 

Eventually, the Doctor arrives at the worst of it, the most recent. The trouble that is looming in Blu’s near future, one that he is no closer to stopping. Because he doesn’t know how and he won’t know, not for a long time, after it has already happened.

 

“It has something to do with getting River out of the Library,” he utters quietly. “That’s all I can gather from what no one will tell me.”

 

Clara reaches out and grabs a hold of his hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’ll fix it.” she says, sounding so convinced of it that he hasn’t the heart to go against her faith in him. “He’s your son, so we both know you’ll cheat on it if needs be.”

 

That brings a well needed chuckle from him. “Oh, Clara,” he sighs, closing his eyes tiredly, “Clara, my Clara. If you say so, then what choice do I really have?” he deadpans.

 

Clara giggles, “That’s right. I’m the boss. You’ve absolutely no say in it.”

 

He thanks her.

 

“It will all be fine.” She assures, letting go of his hand and standing to clean the broken glass on her kitchen floor. She also starts tending to the groceries.

 

After two bags are empty Clara looks around at all the others that need putting away. Then she looks back at the Doctor, sitting there in her kitchen, pulled far away in his thoughts and his worries. They make his wrinkles more prominent and the utter hopelessness of the situation has made his shoulders sag forward, drooping. The devastation is there, hanging onto him with no plans of letting go, and it can't be ignored. She won't let it be. 

 

Deciding the fate of her groceries within seconds, she then starts blustering the Doctor and herself towards wherever he’s parked the Tardis this time, declaring herself as hungry and craving some form of space food _pronto_.

 

The Doctor smiles, grateful for Clara supplying him a distraction so generously, and says, “I know just the place.”


End file.
